Matai Atah Khozeir? (When are you coming back?)

Matai Atah Chozeir?

Some say that everything that happens in Jerusalem is so important that if you encounter a twig lying in the street, it matters whether it is lying lengthwise or crosswise.

It happened seventeen years ago. I was living in Jerusalem and studying at the Pardes Institute. I had a rented room a couple blocks from the Machaneh Yehudah market, One Friday evening in December, I was walking home from Shabbat dinner through the cobblestone streets and alleyways when a baritone voice boomed out from the shadows: “Matai atah chozeir?” (When are you coming back?) I was a bit startled by this baritone voice out of the shadows and looked around. Who was saying these words? A dignified middle-aged Hasid stepped out of the shadows.

“You used to come to our place for Shabbat. We haven’t seen you for three weeks. When are you coming back?” I had a fleeting moment of panic and guilt. Had there been some holy table I once had graced but now had even forgotten existed? Not possible. I remembered distinctly exactly what houses I had been to over the last weeks, and his wasn’t one of them. Nervous for some indescribable reason, I protested that the Hasid must have mistaken me for someone else, and that I had not been to his house for Shabbat. He gave me a long searching look and nodded. “Sorry, sir, Good Shabbos”. I walked on, feeling unsettled.

We have many lenses with which to read Torah. There is the P’shat, the plain meaning, and D’rash, the metaphorical meaning. The plain meaning of “Matai Atah Chozeir” were a greeting from someone asking when a guest would return for another visit. A simple case of mistaken identity. But this was Jerusalem. In the Holy City, nothing is a mistake or coincidence; all is an echo of realms beyond realms. The prophet Hosea gave us God’s words: “Shuvah Yisrael ad Adonai Elohecha” –Return, O Israel, unto Adonai your God. They reverberate off the hills and resonate in the night air.

Applied to life, the lens of D’rash sees no mistaken identity. The Hasid may have had the wrong person, but God had not. Matai Atah Chozeir? I was being asked when I would return to the Holy One. The question hung in the cold night air.

This is how I think it really went: In the great Shabbat before life, our souls sat at the holy table of the Eternal. As we took our leave to go out into the world of separations, we promised we would not forget, that we would keep our beings pure, and that we would find our way back. The world distracted us, we sullied the garments of mind heart, and body, and came to believe we were no longer welcome. Eventually we even forgot there was anywhere to go back to in the first place.

The Hebrew word Teshuvah is often translated as ‘repentance’, but has more the connotation of ‘turning’ or ‘returning’ rather than the English penitence. In modern parlance the term chozeir bitshuvah refers to one who has ‘returned’ to an observant Orthodox Jewish life.

To me, finding my way ‘back’ is a bigger game than that. I could no more count the observances I had taken on and calculate whether I had ‘done teshuvah’ than I could paint my ceiling light blue and call it the sky. The road back leads beyond a collective memory of Jewish life as it was lived before railroads and Ellis Island, before Napoleon and before Hitler. It leads to that realm where we all stood in amazement before Eternity and accepted our assignment to live fully human in this world where destiny hangs from our actions.

The Hebrew month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashanah is a time of inner preparation and teshuvah. Tradition calls it the time of ‘the king in the field’, when God is closer and more accessible to us. Elul is a bit like being in Jerusalem– everything is more significant. Every day, voices call out from the shadows, asking when we will return. The question hangs in the hot air of early September. Yom Kippur will come– how far afield will we find ourselves?

I am always on my way back. No matter what I do, I will never get there completely. It is a journey of a lifetime.